Archive for the ‘Peer Reviewed Papers’ Category

Setting Up Successful educational Robots Activities

Constructionism 2016 Bangkok, Thailand, 1st – 5th February, 2016. Some teachers run excellent lessons with educational robots. Others fail. Good teaching practise, is the key to success and prevails despite diverse and difficult challenges. What is good practice? How can we make sure teachers apply it to educational robots? Constructivism underpins the use of robots, but putting theory in to practise has met with difficulties. The increased focus on curriculum and high-stakes testing makes matters worse. Most teachers I meet feel bullied into “teaching to test” and feel forced into abandoning constructivism for more direct teaching methods. Can teachers deliver lessons that meet their curriculum duties and keep the constructivism spirit alive? These practical questions concern the educational robotic community1. This paper is one of a series that looks at these issues. (more…)

Catlin, D. (2013) A Day in the Life of an Educational Robot. A Report and Analysis of a School Working with Educational Robots. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Robotics in Education. Sept 19th and 20th 2013, Lodz University of Technology, Poland. (more…)

Teaching Robotics without Robots and Computers

The authors discuss their work with Roamer robot and Lego. They describe how playing with Roamer gives children the chance to control technology. They claim children have no fear of programming. They readily press keys and find out what Roamer does without help. The authors did this work with Classic Roamer. The new Roamer has the advantage of telling students what to do when they press the wrong keys. This paper explains how Roamer and Lego can work together and provide a playground ripe for exploration.

The authors presented this paper at the SIMPAR 2010 Workshops International. Conference on Simulation, Modelling and Programming for Automonous Robots, Darmstadt (Germany) November 15-16, 2010